Video: Ashton Kutcher Pranks Aussies for Lenovo

Article by Roland Bleyer

March 30, 2015 at 3:36 PM

Shoppers at a JB Hi-Fi store in Sydney were punk’d by Ashton Kutcher in a prank promoting the new Lenovo Yoga tablets.

Kutcher, who was in town for the TECHmyway event took time out to disguise himself as Lenovo Product Engineer “Coodrey” before heading into an unspecified JB Hi-Fi store in Sydney. With his wig, hat, glasses, moustache and a dodgy Aussie accent, Kutcher proceeded to give a number of customers interesting demonstrations of the Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro Tablets (while also trying to sell them on his new identity).

“These people don’t know what’s gonna happen, and I think that that’s how you say ‘happen’ with an Australian accent,” Kutcher says in his Aussie/Kiwi/South African-sounding accent.

“We’re just gonna have fun and see if we can sell some tablets.”

The video was uploaded to the Lenovo YouTube page on Wednesday 25th March 2015, and has started to do the rounds on news sites around the world. But Kutcher is more than just a spokesperson for the brand – he actually is a product engineer.

As the Wall Street Journalreports, Kutcher was hired by Lenovo in 2013 and “promised that the role would go beyond the typical celebrity spokesperson arrangement”.

True to his word, Kutcher has done everything from research to development and design, alongside the more familiar promotional interviews and punk’d style stunts.

“From the get-go, having not built anything like this before, I had a lot more questions than answers,” Kutcher says in the WSJ interview.

“The first thing I did was go to China to sit down with the team and brainstorm. We felt it was really important with the product to build something that consumers want.”

The resulting Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 Pro that Kutcher/”Coodrey” was selling in Australia is marketed as a hybrid “that adapts to you”.

“Yoga Tablet 2 Pro adapts to you with four ways to use it — Stand, Tilt, Hold, and Hang. What’s more, the integrated projector and robust multimedia features deliver a dazzling home theater experience,” the Lenovo website says.

While the video does show Kutcher trying to strike a deal with several shoppers in Sydney, there’s no official word on how sales are going yet.